About three hours before the first pitch of his first game at Citi Field as a visiting player, Pete Alonso walked into the batting cage outside the Mets clubhouse, on the home side. Visiting players rarely, if ever, wander that deep into enemy territory. But, as became clear immediately, this was no usual visiting player.
“The [redacted] polar bear!” Francisco Alvarez exclaimed, his gerund of choice not fit for print.
He opened his arms wide and gave Alonso a hug, which is exactly how everyone at Citi Field treated him Monday.
The irony, of course, almost goes without saying: The only people at Citi Field who seemed to think the Mets were better off without Alonso were the ones who made the decision not to pursue him in free agency.
In the baseball sense, that is settled business now. Alonso is the heart and soul of the Orioles now. He will be for the next four seasons. The Mets failed to fill the void, if it were possible that anyone not named Pete Alonso could fill that void at all. Maybe no one could.
Because in the emotional sense, nothing about Alonso’s departure is settled business. The grief has not been processed. Acceptance has not yet grown roots.
The front office was wrong. The 2026 Mets were not better without Pete Alonso. And the 2026 Mets were always going to be judged on whether they were better without Pete Alonso. The original skeptics are credible critics, for the moment.
Alonso has already answered several sessions worth of questions about the Mets’ unwillingness to negotiate for his return. His answers to Monday’s were sparklingly diplomatic, honed and practiced. For example: He said he did not take it personally when the Mets didn’t chase him this winter.
“When you have a really good opportunity, you have great dialogue, you don’t necessarily want to, kind of, ruin that. So for me, I didn’t want to look anywhere else because Baltimore was putting in a tremendous effort,” said Alonso, who then emphasized how happy he is as an Oriole.
“Two things can be true at the same time: I’m very happy and appreciative of my time that I spent as a Met, and I’m beyond grateful and appreciative of the Baltimore Orioles.”
Alonso spent 15 minutes answering comparable questions from a gaggle of reporters three rows deep, then apologized for departing as he scurried back to the visitors’ clubhouse in his bare feet.
When he took the field for batting practice, fans in Alonso jerseys cheered. When he stepped in the cage during batting practice, they cheered again. They roared when his name was announced in the starting lineup, then chanted it for several seconds.
When the national anthem was over, they chanted his name again, even though he was not on the field.
When he finally took the field to stretch, they chanted his name again, at which point he tipped his cap to the crowd — only to have the game production team press play on his tribute video. This required him to tip his hat again.
Alonso stepped in the box and the crowd stood until he tipped his helmet to them. They chanted his name for most of his at-bat. After he popped out, they cheered to “Fire Stearns.” And when a ground ball up the line got by current Mets first baseman Brett Baty, they cheered “Pete Alonso” again.
“It’s one of those that, you see him on the other side like, ‘Wow, those are great numbers. That’s Pete Alonso,'” Francisco Lindor said after the game.
“But at the same time, you look in our clubhouse and you say, ‘The guys that we have are capable of helping us win games. We haven’t stayed healthy and we haven’t put the season together.’ As a person, I do miss him, for sure.”
While the Mets have struggled, Alonso is not exactly cruising to the postseason without him: His Orioles, though technically still alive for the third American League Wild Card spot, are three games out with 11 games to play. But they are still alive.
Alonso went 0-for-3 with a walk, meaning he did not yet subject Citi Field to the torture of watching his 300th career homer come for another team, though he still has two games to do so.
No, on Monday night, the baseball fates had another twist in mind: When his Orioles took the opener 2-1, they officially eliminated the Mets from postseason contention.
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